


So Go The Seasons

by rosepetalfall



Series: Shakespeare's Sister - Genderswapped History Boys [2]
Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - All Media Types, History Boys - Bennett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 16:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosepetalfall/pseuds/rosepetalfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All girls grow up someday. </p><p>Scripps and Posner, from school through Oxford and beyond. </p><p>-</p><p>Scripps is observant, so it isn’t as if she doesn’t know about Posner and girls before the infatuation with Dakin. She thinks if she’d only paid better attention, she would have noticed sooner. Not so much about the girls perhaps, but at least about the lack of boys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Go The Seasons

**Author's Note:**

> This is the companion to No gate, no lock, no bolt, but can be read alone. Again, this genderswap is based on curlybeach's lovely picspam, which can be found here: http://curlybeach.livejournal.com/134642.html?page=1#comments
> 
> Edited and reposted from livejournal

Summer:

Scripps is observant, so it isn’t as if she doesn’t know about Posner and girls before the infatuation with Dakin. She thinks if she’d only paid better attention, she would have noticed sooner. Not so much about the girls perhaps, but at least about the lack of boys.

Pos is a dancer, young and small, admittedly, yet somehow willowy, or at least containing the imminent possibility of being willowy. And there are those who pay attention to that. 

-

The summer after they finish fourth form, Brian over at Cutler’s, whose mum is Scripps’ mum’s friend and who she therefore has to tolerate, asks, “Who’s your friend? The one with the bike who meets you after church?”

“Daisy?”

“Sure, if that’s her name.”

“That’s Daisy.”

“Pretty, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Scripps agrees, bemused. 

Scripps informs Posner, of course, the next afternoon, as they amble through the park.

“I think Brian sort of fancies you,” she says, carefully nonchalant.

“Brian?” Posner asks, half absorbed in the clouds. 

“Yeah, from church. The one who lives across the street from me.”

“Oh.” Posner blinks and stares at Scripps, baffled. “Why? I hadn’t thought we knew each other, really.”

“I don’t know,” Scripps laughs. “He thinks you’re pretty is all.” Posner has her brow furrowed so Scripps says, “Don’t worry, I’ll tell him you’re not interested. You’re too young for that kind of thing anyway.”

“Oh, well. Thanks.”

That, in any case, is that. Scripps feels her duty done (on both sides) and is rather relieved. (Daisy is only fifteen, the youngest of their lot, and Brian’s nice enough but he’s dull, has been since he was an infant.)

-

Then the summer after A-levels, before the start of it all, there is John the book shop boy (in a manner of speaking, as he is done with quickly). Pos works summers, like the rest of them, but she has a rather more decent job than the rest. The bookshop she works at is sweet and the woman who runs it gives Daisy an employee’s discount on books. A month in, Posner can alphabetize like a professional, or so she claims. 

John is the other hired summer help, though the shop isn’t really large enough to require two seasonal workers. Scripps suspects it must be a family thing, because John is even less of a salesperson than Posner, and can’t reel off titles and locations at nearly the same speed.

One day, Posner comes over after they’ve both gotten off work (and really, bakeries are far less appealing once one had worked inside one, Scripps decides). 

“You’re rather dour looking today,” Scripps notes.

“Not dour. Contemplative, maybe,” Posner replies.

“About what? Life, the universe? That’s a very weighty face.”

“Boys.”

“Oh, are you?”

Posner frowns at her. “Not like that. Or, I mean. Like that, but.”

“Yes?” Scripps prompts.

“John, he asked me to the cinema.”

“On a date?”

“Yeah.”

“Daisy, darling, you know you don’t have to go if you don’t want to?”

Posner frowns and clicks her tongue. “You needn’t talk as if you’re my mother. I’m sure _she’d_ be pleased anyhow. Or well, he isn’t Jewish, so maybe not.” She frowns.

“Daisy?” Scripps asks, gently touching Posner’s elbow.

“I’ve said yes,” Posner says, shrugging. “I thought, well, I just thought everyone else has, and why not me?”

Scripps can think of many reasons ‘why not’ (Posner is so terrifying young, and frighteningly clever, and she makes Scripps think of a young Virginia Woolf on occasion, though she’s less sad and her family less disturbed, even with the tragedy of the war written into their veins). But Donna is Daisy’s friend and meant to be encouraging. (Akthar is more the one to confront whatever Other is bothering Daisy; she is the oldest sister of five and intolerant of cruelty from those she does not care for.)

“I’m not a child,” Posner says. She’s pouting and therefore not very convincing.

“Of course not.” Scripps humors her.

The date doesn’t work out, though of course Scripps predicts that.

Posner looks miserable the day after, shades of guilt clinging to her. 

“It . . . just didn’t feel the way I thought it would. It’s nothing like in the films, is it?” she asks morosely, touching her lips and reliving the disappointment of her first kiss. 

Scripps doesn’t know what to say. She hasn’t anything to add, except poetry. No lived experience (she won’t count poor Walter, she never has, though maybe she ought to feel bad about that). Miss Hector would have something appropriate prepared but Pos is hardly heartbroken, merely - disillusioned.

“Well, never mind,” Scripps says, instead. “We’re trying for Oxford, aren’t we? There’s no time for distractions, of the male persuasion or otherwise.”

Posner brightens slightly, as she always does when reminded she’s a candidate for the mighty Oxford (her, a small Jewish girl from Sheffield, who was expected to be a son, a boy who could be named for the clever, powerful David). 

“I suppose,” she agrees, slipping her arm through Scripps’. “Perhaps it’s for the best. Dad thinks John’s a bit dim and I have to say I rather agree. He thought _Pride and Prejudice_ was boring. Didn’t think it was clever at all. Can you imagine?”

“How disappointedly bourgeois,” Scripps says with an affected accent. (Neither of them quite understand what being ‘bourgeois’ means, only that they aren’t it and of course, the French Revolution and Karl Marx and all that.) She shakes her head with knowingly superior air.

Posner laughs.

-

School:

They’re Oxbridge candidates now and the Headmistress thinks they require polishing. As such, they have a new teacher. She’s very young. 

“She can’t really have already graduated university, can she?” Dakin asks from her seat atop a table, twisting a strand of hair around a manicured finger. “Look at her face.”

“Oh, leave off,” Scripps says, without any expectation that Dakin actually will (she’s interested, paying attention, and when Dakin’s interested, she follows through). 

“I don’t know that I will,” Dakin replies. “She thinks my essays are _dull_. I am not dull.”

“I don’t think you’re dull,” Posner offers, looking up from her notes and her rather worn biography of Henry VIII. 

Dakin nod vaguely, a queen to her subjects. 

Daisy scratches at her wrist, looks down, looks at the clock and exclaims, “Oh, hell! I’ve got to find Esther and bring her to piano lessons!”

Scripps frowns sympathetically. Child-care duties are bothersome and so rarely actually lucrative, though Pos’s little cousin is lovely most of the time.

Posner stuffs her books into her book bag (new, leather, a gift from her father after her exam results) haphazardly and scrambles away, hair flying. 

“Tell Mrs. Harrison I’m working on the Bach piece when you see her,” Scripps calls after her. Posner waves a panicked hand in acknowledgment. Scripps thinks there’s probably about even chances on whether Pos will actually remember. 

Dakin’s still staring out the window, left eyebrow slightly raised, staring into the distance. Scripps is entirely sure Dakin hasn’t even noticed Posner leave the room.

-

“And there she goes, the face that launched a thousand whispered rumors!” crows Lockwood, as Dakin drives by. Dakin waves, coy in the passenger seat of the car. She is wearing lipstick and sunglasses. It’s Felix’s office boy driving.

“Not quite Helen of Troy, yet,” Scripps says. 

“She’s beautiful enough,” Posner murmurs.

“Maybe,” Scripps says, “but Helen of Sheffield really doesn’t have the same ring, does it?”

Posner doesn’t appear to be listening.

Scripps would worry, but she’s a bit more concerned about her own bid at Oxford than Daisy’s infatuation. When it comes to school, Donna’s never worried about Daisy - she’d spent half of last spring crying over Keats and still aced her A-Levels, while Donna spent what felt like years folded into uncomfortable chairs at the library. Sometimes Donna thinks a bit of distraction might be good for Daisy, even if it does result in unwanted serenades.

-

“I understand, you know,” Posner says. 

“What Irwin even meant to have us do with this assignment? Come over here and help me then.”

“No, not that,” Posner says dismissively. “Dakin. Why she likes Irwin.”

Scripps looks up now; it seems the situation requires it. “It’s only because she’s finally met someone she has to work to impress, Daisy.”

“Oh, it’s that, but it’s more than that. Miss Irwin, she’s sort of beautiful - and don’t, Donna, I’m perfectly fine being referred to as the “elf” if everyone’s going to keep calling me that - though honestly that doesn’t - .” Daisy frowns and starts again, “It’s more than just being hard to please. She’s confident, isn’t she?” 

“Daisy -”

“I could be confident.”

“I’m sure you could. Now, come on, help me with this. I can’t believe you’re done already.”

“I’m going to do it,” Posner declares.

“Help me? Thanks very much, I have been asking.”

“Go to Oxford. I’m going to do it.” Posner looks marble hard. 

“All right.” Scripps believes her.

-

Daisy waits for her outside of church, still. Not every week, like they used to (“All that reading,” Daisy had said and then trailed off), but still often enough. 

Sometimes Scripps comes by for the Posners’ usually weekly Shabbat and helps herd Daisy’s numerous young cousins around (and that on organized nights - on unorganized ones, it’s only Mr. and Mrs. Posner and Daisy and sometimes Adi, escaping her own bustling household to study or watch television in the relative silence). Donna wouldn’t say it, but Mrs. Posner’s a much better cook than her own mum and she loves the old Shabbat candlesticks everyone handles with such care. 

Donna loves God and generally operates under the assumption that God is probably, at worst, neutral or disinterested about her in return. She’s not sure what Archbishop of Canterbury would say, but either way, she’s fairly certain occasionally keeping the Sabbath two days a week isn’t affecting her chances of salvation. Or not negatively anyway. 

“It’s all God, isn’t it?” Donna says to Sara one day. 

Sara merely raises her eyebrows. 

-

“It’s in the reach of my arms/ the span of my hips,” Akthar says, throwing her arms out. She looks like she could start dancing any moment.

“The stride of my step,/ the curl of my lips,” Posner chimes. She has good rhythm, for all her hesitance.

Headmistress Felix looks rather uncomfortable, but she doesn’t attempt to stop them. They are imminent Oxford girls now, and this is possibly their first taste of champagne.

“I’m a woman./Phenomenally./ Phenomenal woman,/ That’s me,” Akthar and Posner croon together.

“Well done, well done, girls. And who is that?” Hettie asks. She is not entirely herself today.

“Maya Angelou?” offers Irwin after a moment’s hesitance.

“Oooh, well done, miss!”

“Oh, Miss _Irwin_!”

“My god, look how far she’s come!”

“We’re so proud, miss!”

“She’s American,” Posner explains. She is still giddy.

“My mum thinks she might be a good role model,” Crowther says. 

-

Summer:

“I don’t think I’m prepared,” Daisy says. 

“Wonder if I need new shoes now,” Lockwood says, pulling at grass. 

“Oxford had better be fucking wonderful,” Sara says. 

-

Oxford, Year 1:

“So, why Daisy?” a boy asks Posner. They’re both first years at Magdalen, in their first days (of the rest of their lives) though he doesn’t seem nearly as petrified. Or perhaps he’s better at hiding. Certainly his suits are of better quality than her own blazers.

“Dunno,” she murmurs, “didn’t really want to be called Davinia all the time, did I? And I read some story. The girl was called Daisy. Seemed more, English, I suppose. I was five,” she defended herself.

“Well Davinia’s nice. Sort of . . . exotic,” he decides. “More exciting than Thomas, anyway.”

Posner had forgotten his name again until now, and hadn’t wanted to ask again. They’d already spoken several times.

“I think I’ll call you that,” the boy who is apparently Thomas says.

“Sorry, what?”

“Davinia, silly. You could be a poet with a name like that.”

Posner seriously doubts that. It’s sort of a nice thought though.

“D’you like Queen?”

“Erm, the band? Yeah, I suppose.”

“We’re going to get on,” Thomas declares, with a certainly Posner envies.

She listens to The Smith’s more, but Bohemian Rhapsody’s interesting. Strange, but that was its appeal. She could reliably get a glare from horrible Mrs. Barnes across the way if she blasted it on Saturday afternoons back home. So perhaps Thomas’s right. 

-

Scripps isn’t sure what she thinks of Posner’s new friend. She thinks she would have liked him if she’d met him herself. But as it is, he’s charming and well read and insufferably posh. He has the kind of posture that has to be drilled into you and she imagines that he smells like class. (Really, he just wears cologne, something deeper and muskier than vicar’s back home.)

“Davinia,” he says, whenever he addresses Posner, which is often. 

“Davey!” his blonde friend calls out, “Davey, you’ve got to see this, darling.”

No one but Pos’s family calls her Davinia.The new teachers would, (“Oh, miss, you’re just looking for Daisy, over there, see? Cuz she’s such a flower.”) but never for long. 

“Davinia?” Dakin laughs, when she first hears. “How proper we are getting.”

Posner flushes and mutters, “He thinks it’s more elegant, yeah? And it’s my name.”

Scripps thinks Daisy is perfectly elegant, a Fitzgerald name, though Posner has all the missing kindness that Gatsby’s Daisy wanted for. She might be more of a Nicole Diver, but Scripps chooses not to think on that. Still, she can’t help but worry. Posner is too lightly built. Getting swept off her feet might be a permanent situation.

And so she has to ask. “Daisy,” Scripps murmurs later as they sit cross legged. “Daisy, are you -”

“Oh, Don,” Posner smiles, resting her chin on Scripps’ shoulder, “always my knight. It’s not like that. I thought maybe at first, like you did. But you know, I rather think he likes Oscar Wilde a bit too much for that.”

“Oh,” laughs Scripps, “does he then?”

Posner giggles. “He’s absolutely mooning over some third year. The man _rows_ apparently. My god, it’s like a fucking novel. He pines.”

Scripps smiles back and says nothing of the last year, the serenades. Posner does look happier here. She’s often worried, nearly always weighed down by books and papers and constantly in a rush when Scripps sees her but for all that she seems more solid.

-

There’s a girl in Posner’s 9 o’clock lecture that she likes to look at. She’s got the loveliest bright hair, all curls, and she always looks impeccably tailored. Posner decides she must come from money. It’s an expression she’s picked up recently. It’s a very funny innuendo, as if a child could spring from so many pounds and shillings. (Posner is always a bit of a loss when she encounters old coins. Decimals are so much tidier.) Thomas always looks a bit icy when people say it, as if people couldn’t read his family fortune off his clothes and the way that he walks.

Posner doesn’t learn the girl’s name, and she presumes the other girl doesn’t care to learn hers. It doesn’t bother her. She knows now that it’s passing in the specific, but lasting in general. The knowledge, at least, is strengthening. She’ll never marry.

She knows her mother still hopes to see her under a canopy one day. Oxford must count as a something of a consolation prize though, or so she hopes.

-

Summer:

“Home, sweet home,” Dakin mutters darkly, as their train pulls into the station.

Akthar throws a crumpled napkin at her head. Posner giggles. Scripps smiles but pretends like she hasn’t noticed. Rudge really hasn’t.

Scripps isn’t happy to be home, exactly. It’s like coming back to a mosaic, one you’d passed and seen and memorized, only to find the pieces rearranged. It’s not Sheffield that’s different really, though of course, time leaves its mark on everyone and everything, even on her mum’s smiling face. She’s changed as well. She has a fringe, to start with, a business-like bob. She rather likes it. When she’d gotten it done, Posner had smiled, kissed her cheek softly and said there was no one she’d rather see on a book jacket, and that she looked a kind of National Geographic dashing. Dakin had said she looked like flapper. Akthar, had, of course, contested this.

Her mum likes it though. “Oh, you look like a lady. My Donna, all ready for the City.” 

It grows out, over the course of the summer.

Still, at least she did it to begin with.

-

Oxford, Year 2:

“Come into London with us, Davey,” Lola wheedles. (Her name is not actually Lola but Laura. She likes to try names on for size though, and this is her current one of choice. Posner’s still not sure she entirely likes her, though she admires her bright red lipstick and head-on stare.)

“Look I can’t, not this weekend. I’ve got to work.”

“You always have to work,” Thomas says. He’s sulking and it makes Posner feel ever more like she’s Charles in _Brideshead Revisited_. 

“You can go do whatever it is you’d like, Tom, but I’m staying here.” Posner thinks she has better learned to defend herself, even if it is only to her friends.

“Fine, do what you want,” Lola says. “Let’s go, Thomas.” She sashays out. She’s trying too hard to be a femme fatale.

Thomas lingers though. “You’re sure you’re not going to come, then?”

“Yes.”

“Lot of pretty girls, though.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, some of us are going to have be employed when we get out of here, Harrington!”

“And spending the weekend preparing for your Monday tutorial is really going to be what makes a difference?” Thomas asks. It gets to the heart of the matter. But Posner has spent so much time wanting Oxford that she can’t stop now. So she grabs her things, starts to brush past him.

“Where’re you going?” 

“Scripps’s,” she says shortly. “I can’t concentrate with you lot hanging around.”

“Oh,” Thomas says, and he is again the easily delighted figure she was befriended by, “is that how it is?”

He apologizes later, but sometimes Posner thinks he’s a bit too perceptive for his own good. Or that they share a similar cruel streak. In any case, Posner tells him, desperately, she only wants to get through uni. He doesn’t know what it _means_ , for her to be here. But she’s not sure that’s the truth.

-

It’s not an unhappy time. For all that Oxford’s not the answer, Posner does hold out hope that it’s the beginning to one. Primary research, possibly.

Or it could not be.

She’s heard Irwin’s just got a job at the BBC, and she’d never actually been to Oxford, or not like she’d said anyway. Posner doesn’t want to write programmes for television though.

She thinks she might rather teach. She doesn’t tell her mum or dad. They have such lofty ambitions for her.

She cuts her hair on a Thursday evening.

-

Posner shows up at Scripps’ door one early winter morning, rosy-cheeked and wind swept. Her hair is gone. Or most of it is, anyway.

“Do you like it?” she beams. She tosses her head like a horse. Scripps is tempted to point out she hasn’t got a mane anymore. “Tom did it. Or well, he started to, and then Adi made me go to the hair dresser’s. I just thought - .”

She looks like a page boy, or like Puck. She is impish.

“Of course I do, dear,” Scripps says at last. “You look lovely.”

And she does. She has a soft fringe floating across her forehead and somehow her hair looks closer to auburn than usual. She could be Peter Pan and Tinkerbell all in one.

“I’m glad,” Posner replies seriously. “I wanted you to like it.”

“Shall I call you Rosalind now?” Scripps asks later, when she is sitting on her bed, and Posner has commandeered the one chair the room boasts.

“Call me whatever you’d like!” Posner laughs. “I feel so light, Donna, it’s wonderful.” She clambers onto the bed alongside Scripps. “Would you be my Celia then?”

“Well,” Scripps asks, “who would be Oliver?”

“Anyone you want, dear,” Posner says seriously and presses a kiss to Scripps’ cheek. (She’s often given to bouts of affection but it’s mostly her young cousins and Akthar and Scripps who are the recipients.) “God, if you’d like,” she smiles wickedly. It’s an expression that’s eerily Dakin-esque and yet it looks comfortable, fitting, on Posner’s face. The comment doesn’t really make as much sense any more (uni will change a girl’s mind, though now Scripps isn’t sure what exactly it was worth changing it for) but Posner has always been good at remembering things. 

“You little fucking blasphemer!” Scripps laughs. She pushes Posner away, onto her side. But she hugs back when Posner springs up again and throws her arms out.

Yes, Oxford is doing all right by both of them.

-

“The short hair, the new name, those trousers. Are you going through a George Sand phase, Daisy?” Lockwood asks. The Cambridge girls are up for a rare visit, and so they are all crushed into a pub stall for the occasion. 

“Oh, shut up, Jamie,” Akthar says. 

Lockwood laughs. “I’m only asking because if you were, that’d be alright by me.”

“Generous of you,” Scripps says.

“No, I’m not going through a George Sand phase,” Posner says. She looks as if she’s barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “But I’ll be sure to tell you if I develop a sudden passion for Chopin.”

“Or Marie Dorval,” Dakin mutters. 

Scripps doesn’t know who Marie Dorval was and clearly no one else does either. 

But Dakin’s staring beyond the booth to the television. Scripps highly suspects it’s Irwin on there, with her shiny hair and serious expression and dramatic claims, but certain things are best overlooked.

“Also, Davinia’s my actual name and my trousers are perfectly stylish, thanks,” Posner adds rather belatedly. She looks disgruntled and Scripps laughs. Posner’s face softens a bit.

-

Summer:

It’s warm enough to be dozy, and Scripps has followed Dakin to the park. Dakin’s telling some story about her boss and her boss’s secretary and why she’s sure they’re having it on, but Scripps is only half listening. She wants to wrap herself in the summer wind. (And that’s a good line, maybe, she thinks. She’ll have to write that down, but right now she’s too sunshine drowsy to rummage around in her purse for her notebook and pen.) It’s that kind of day.

And then suddenly there is Posner. She’s on her bike, cruising through, and she doesn’t seem to have noticed Scripps and Dakin. Scripps thinks to call out for a moment, but doesn’t. Daisy looks like she’s skimming across the ground, and she’s (finally) wearing her glasses. In her blue sundress, the one her father got her for her last birthday (it has small white daisies printed on it and Posner had looked a bit like she wanted to cry) and ballet flats, she looks just like a picture.

“Donna? Are you even listening?” Dakin asks. She sits up and - sees. “Oh.”

“What? Yes, I was. Nancy from the office - “

Dakin tilts her head a bit and stares straight at Scripps. “Really? You? I wouldn’t have thought.” Posner’s mostly out of view now, the green bag she’d bought at that thrift shop in London and the rear wheel of her bicycle disappearing behind some bushes. 

“You wouldn’t have thought what?” Scripps is so very fucked.

Dakin smiles, toothy and sharp, and merely says, “Huh. Explains a bit, I suppose. So how long has it been like that for you?”

“How long’re you going to stay stuck on Irwin?” It’s unnecessarily harsh, saying that, and Scripps knows it. 

Dakin leaves. Scripps isn’t sure this whole moment of realization could have gone any worse. No duels or suicides at least. Life is rarely the kind of dramatic Scripps was prepared for.

-

“Donna?” Posner asks. It’s a familiar scene, the two of them stretched out on Posner’s lawn, their legs bare beneath their summer clothes. It seems so impossible that this may be their last summer soaking in the ever elusive Sheffield sun together. 

“Yes?”

“Are you and Dakin fighting?”

“Not anymore.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

Posner twists the tail of her hair ribbon headband around her finger. “I was just worried, I guess. You don’t fight very often, and Lockwood, she came by the bookshop the other day, and she said Dakin’d been fuming.”

“I didn’t realize Dakin’s moods were such an issue to you,” Scripps says.

“Donna,” Posner says reproachfully, “they’re really not. Not anymore. Not for ages, even.”

That’s just a bit of an exaggeration, but Scripps appreciates the sentiment anyway. “I know. Well, you needn’t worry. We’re all fine now.”

“Good. I’m glad,” Posner says, still looking down. Then she glances up and gives just a bit of a smile. She lies back down on the grass, and murmurs, “It’s almost Oxford time again, can you imagine?”

Scripps hums, acquiescent and warm through. She could fall asleep here, embracing the ground. 

“The last of Summer is Delight,” Posner whispers.

-

Oxford, Year 3:

Perhaps it’s silly, waiting longer, after that summer. There can only be so much assurance when it comes to love, surely, Scripps thinks. She waits anyway.

At Oxford, it’s hard to ignore the haunting feeling of the future. It follows them everywhere, like a shadow with no concept of the sun’s cycle. It’s only fall, but their time is already sliding away. Adulthood doesn’t so much beckon as whisper around corners and pop in for tea uninvited.

Posner has started wearing her glasses regularly now. “One does have to start somewhere,” she says. 

-

Adi’s been Daisy’s best friend for ages. Neither remembers how they first met, but they’ve been told the story by their mums enough times that they’ve created memories, almost. The park, the swing set, and the instant camaraderie of young children. Daisy had been terribly put out to learn they were in different years, later. It seemed desperately unfair that Adila got to go have adventures before her. It was half the reason she’d worked so hard, to be bumped up. 

It had only made sense for them to do Oxford together, to keep each other within grasp, even as they cut their anchors. 

And now London’s calling (Gregory down the hall is constantly playing that song and Posner can never get it out of her head) and like the droves of expectant third years, their minds turns ever southward. 

“Are you sure, about this teaching thing?” Akthar asks. They are surrounded by a terrifying amount of paper. Posner thinks if there was ever a fire, her room would go up in flames immediately.

“Are you?” she asks. 

Akthar shrugs. “Dunno. Lots of people change careers though. Not the end of the world, is it?” Adi’s always been better at this whole modern flexibility thing.

“Yeah, I suppose. Still wish you would say you’d split a flat with me.”

Akthar looks at her shrewdly. “I’m sure in a few months you won’t be wanting me around during the nights.”

“Don’t be crass.”

Akthar laughs. “It’s like watching a living Edith Wharton story, except without the enormous fortunes and thus any of the interesting bits, the two of you. Amazingly dull, actually.”

“You are a terrible human being.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to find some other nice, responsible girl your mum approves of to live with, Daisy.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

-

It's going on winter soon, and the wind has picked up a shivery quality. Posner's half asleep in Scripps' bed and Scripps hasn't the heart to throw her out now, so late at night. (As if she could.)

The tape of Billie Holiday her dad had found and posted her, along with a jumper from her mum, is playing. 

“Oh, this song,” Posner says, her eyelashes sweeping slowly up and down. She smiles slowly. “I like this song. 'Specially when she sings it.” 

“Could be us, in a few months,” Scripps says, as Billie begins to sing about foggy London town. “In London, anyway.” 

Posner hums her agreement. She looks . . . embraceable. So Scripps leans over and kisses her. The music begins to pick up. 

And so that was all that was needed. Nothing special at all. An unengaging narrative, perhaps, but Scripps finally feels poetry personified. Posner, Scripps decides, looks really wonderful, like warmth and wildness and flowing words trapped in amber, with her hair all mussed and her lips parted.

“Stay the night?” Scripps asks.

Posner raises her eyebrows, wicked and delighted. “Why, Scripps! I am a lady, you know.”

Scripps rolls her eyes, and replies, “Oh, don't be an arse.”

“'Course I'll stay,” Posner says, and she bites her lip. Scripps decides the correct course of action is to continue kissing her.

In the morning, Posner wakes slowly, and doesn't move from their tangle of warmth, though she's got a tutorial in a few hours. She pets Scripps' hair and whisper-sings, “And the age of miracles hadn't past,” though the tape's long been silenced.

-

Scripps uses up more notebooks than ever, writing nonsense and joy and the word bliss.

“You're a bit disgusting,” Dakin says. Her stare is heavy and judging, as are her curtains of dark and solemn hair.

Scripps beams and doesn't say one day Dakin will understand. “Well, you're a bit sad.”

“Am I, then?”

“Are you what?” Posner asks. She hooks her chin over Scripps' shoulder.

“Sad,” Scripps explains. “I was saying Sara's a bit sad.”

Posner nods seriously. “The thought of the split ends you must have does bring me to verge of tears sometimes. You should really cut your hair, dear. You haven't done that in ages.”

“I do not fucking well have split ends!”

“I'm sure you don't.”

“Oh, of course not.”

They were always a bit much when they banded together. 

“Oh, fuck both of you, really,” Dakin mutters, swilling her wine.

“Sorry,” Scripps says, with her best contrite expression.

“Yeah, dreadfully. We're going to have to decline that offer,” Posner adds. “We're trying monogamy.”

“But maybe in the future,” Scripps says.

“Or you know, not then either,” Posner concludes.

Dakin glares.

-

The winter snow falls, and they go home to Sheffield, catching each other's eyes across streets and while shopping, and it's like sharing an open secret. Scripps thinks surely everyone must be able to read it off her body.

“You're very happy,” her father says.

“I am,” she replies. 

He stares for a moment and nods. “That's good.”

“It is.”

Posner's smiles taste like peppermint and promises.

-

Spring and suddenly everything's a rush. Spring and exams and suddenly - .

“I don't think I quite believe it,” Posner says, sitting on her bed. Her face is blankly terrified.

“Yes, well,” Scripps says, “nevertheless.”

“Doesn't it seem strange? The rooms, the books, the learning, the lovers on Addison's Walk. It'll all go on without us. As if we were never here.”

“That's a rather disheartening way to look at it.” Scripps sits down too, navigating her way around some precarious piles of books. She suspects Posner has been compulsively stacking and re-stacking them for days now. “That dresser's never going to be same, at least,” she says, nodding at it. There had been an incident with copious amounts of red wine and a scented candle. The burn marks are rather more dramatic than the whole thing warranted.

“That is true,” Posner says, smiling wanly.

“It's not the end, you know,” Scripps says, and kisses Posner's bare shoulder. It isn't warm enough for her to be in a sleeveless dress and no sweater but then Posner's always been too hopeful about spring.

“I know,” Posner replies. And then with more conviction, “I know.”

-

Summer:

Posner thinks half their things must be strewn throughout the country, dumped in Sheffield, forgotten at mates' places, swallowed by Oxford's grandeur and thorough cleaning staff. In any case, when Posner arrives in London at the beginning of August, she comes with many books and no furniture. 

Scripps had come down a few weeks earlier. Posner's mum had wanted some last stolen moments, had whispered Hebrew prayers into her short, soft hair (don't forget, please, don't forget) and her father had kissed her forehead. She took a morning train, after breakfast, and watched England roll by. Scripps was there at the station to meet her and for a moment it had been just like a film. It was not an ending though, but yet another beginning. 

Their flat is tiny, and only not cramped because it's still empty. The windows look out onto a grimy street and a parking lot and the next door neighbors are entirely too fond of hard rock and each other, and at the worst hours. The girls don't even have a proper bed, but a mattress on the floor (it will take months, and another flat, before that changes).

Still, it's theirs and Posner decides Virginia Woolf was certainly on to something with that. Then again, she's always rather been of the opinion Virginia Woolf was on to something with everything really.

They're busy, and moreover, quite bloody poor. Posner's still a student (“I'm attempting to stay in school for as long as possible.” “You sound like you're trying to avoid a draft.” “Honestly, is that really the metaphor you’re going to use? Though you may have a point.”) for all that she's learning to teach now, and Scripps is running about at all hours of the day (and night), doing exactly what she expected not to do. (But still, it would be a shame for the public to be denied the structure of her sentences in whatever form possible, Posner believes.) The pursuit of truth and justice and a brighter future for the next generation is not nearly as lucrative as tax law is apparently going to be. 

(“Tax law? Dakin? She doesn't even like maths,” Posner had said, baffled, and Scripps thought surely her sudden surge of affection was ridiculous and unwarranted.)

It is happiness, though, of a certain fashion. They cannot live like this forever, sweaty and exhausted and afraid of their own toaster, and hopefully they won't, but it's right now it's just a bit romantic.

-

Later:

It's been a long day and Scripps is tired and remarkably annoyed when she gets home.

Posner's in the kitchen, making tea, and her hair's tumbling out of a haphazard bun held up by one of those red pens she uses for marking. Framed against the darkening sky outside the window, she could be a Hopper painting.

She turns around and smiles, comes up to Scripps and kisses her. And it's routine and expected and still ordinary-perfect. 

“Alright, love?” Posner asks. She tucks a few stray hairs behind Scripps' ear.

“Yes,” Scripps says, and it's true.

-

"There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul." - Edith Wharton

**Author's Note:**

> References, in order are: Phenomenal Woman - Maya Angelou, The last of summer is Delight - Emily Dickinson, and A Foggy Day. Rosalind and Celia come from As You Like It, and George Sand did indeed have a thing with Chopin. The things you learn when watching Hugh Grant movies.


End file.
